


per dei oculus, transeat a acus

by auxbloood



Series: We Don't Talk to Gods Anymore [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Behold this series in which nobody can handle being an adult very well, But lawd do they try along the way, Connor Needs A Hug, Established Relationship, Eventual Big Gay Love Story, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Hank Anderson Being an Asshole, Loss of Innocence, M/M, Mild Smut, P.S. Y'all don't come for me but my Hank can't handle being an adult very well, Self-Doubt, Self-Reflection, Unhealthy Relationships, in fact, part one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 20:37:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxbloood/pseuds/auxbloood
Summary: Hank was ingrained in his programming, seared into his brain from day one. Complete his mission (with Hank). Protect Hank. Save Hank from certain death at the hands of his clone. Help him through anything, because he was inseparable from him from the very start, after all.You know, fairy tale romance business.trans.// per dei oculus, transeat a acus.[through god's eye, pass a needle]





	per dei oculus, transeat a acus

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of a series, and can be read stand-alone.
> 
> I always write with specific songs on repeat. I'd suggest listening with them in tow for the real feel of every chapter from here on out. They usually dictate how they'll go in my brain nugget. See the end of each chapter for the songs list.
> 
> Carry on to work two in one week if you'd like more of Connor saying 'fuck.'
> 
> Updates once per week.

\-----------------------

There were three things.

He kept a neat little tally in his head, always nestled at the edge of his vision, lingering even when he begged his mind to store it, shove it away under sub-routine after sub-routine like all the other little mundane things that ran through his brain every day. But there it was, omnipresent since December, lingering.

Bottom right corner.

Outlined in blue, opacity set at 13%.

![QUERY#3455-1,3]!

He could minimize it, tuck it away as far as his peripheral display would allow. But never delete it.

Three things that were wrong.

Three things wrong between him and Hank, whom he loved more than anything in this world (didn’t he?). And wasn’t the life with the person you loved more than anything supposed to be something close to perfect? It’s not like Connor didn’t expect the road bump or two. . .

And these three things that weren’t all that wrong, were they? Really?

But what did you do when they wouldn’t go away?

Could Connor really justify the number of hours the query had been open in his head, the months it had spent occupying that little piece of his mind? It was hard not to second guess things when your synthetic brain that had an eidetic memory could reload file after file until you had seen every moment a thousand times, looking for a clue as to why you seemed haunted.

Three things that shouldn’t be in his peripheral vision while he brought Hank coffee, when he kissed Hank goodnight and felt the rough stubble of his chin, when Hank led him by the hand and laid him on sheets of soft cotton, washed with Connor’s favorite detergent. When they were chasing perpetrators through the streets of ice-slick Detroit during the dead of winter. When he lead families to the morgue to confirm their loved ones were really gone.

When he did anything at all, really.

Three things that shouldn’t be wrong, but they are.

But they are.

\---------------------

PERIPHERAL LOG;//… ACCESS QUERY #3455-1,3

>>>

>>>

>>>

QUERY LOAD;//… LOAD COMPLETE

>>>

>>>

>>>

PLAY BACK?;//[YES]^[NO]

>>>[YES]

\-----------------------

>>>2038/23/DECEMBER;//

Log number one: Connor liked to think about things.

And he liked to think it was because his mind was structured the way it was, processing hundreds of tetra-bytes of data per minute, pre-structuring crime scenes and scenarios all day. Maybe, he thought, because CyberLife had built him to be a detective, he had a penchant for calculating everything, down to the absolute minutiae most would consider insane. It would give him the perfect excuse when trying to explain to Hank for what felt like the millionth time that he just needed a minute. To breathe, to contemplate, and decide what exactly he wanted to say before he lay it from his mouth.

What he knew it did mean, for certain, was that his LED was a dead-rights giveaway.

So he’d found himself seven times now in front of a mirror, thirium trickling down his shaking wrist as he held some sharp edge to his head trying to pry the circle from his temple. Every time the scissors graced its threshold, he shook.

What’s the matter?

Why can’t you do it?

. . .

Someone.

Anyone.

Do it for me. Please.

. . .

Scissors back in the cabinet, five minutes for the skin to heal. Routine. Like his little list.

And so it stayed.

Which meant that Connor lit up like a Christmas tree every time he wanted that space to think. Happy holidays, you get at least sixty seconds of silence. Wrapped up in pretty colors.

Blue, to yellow, to red, to blue. His dead giveaway, his ultimate tell.

Some poker face, he’d joke when it wasn’t particularly crushing. It wasn’t comical often.

Back and forth and back and forth it would go while Hank would infallibly fling every syllable from his whisky soured throat, staring intently at the colors it splayed when they talked.

When Hank did, at least.

\-----------------------

11:11pm.

He noticed the first thing sitting in the car, new frost slowly splicing across the window panes in laterals as they went back and forth colloquially about something definitely unrelated to the seedy bar they were staking out across the snowy banks of the street in the south side. They were supposed to be looking for a girl with incandescent red hair dropping a duffel bag of thirium off to the friendly neighborhood red-ice cartel.

But things had been slow for hours, and Hank decided it was time to talk, instead.

“Hey, Con?” Hank had murmured, fidgeting in his seat while he turned the volume slowly up on the radio.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

Hank looked away towards the neon glow of the bar’s entrance, nauseatingly magenta, drumming his fingers across the steering wheel. The rhythm from the kick-drum in the song playing low on the radio, Connor registered. Off by 9 beats per minute, by his calculation.

But Connor would never say so.

The silence perforated by the soft tapping dragged on. Hank looked back and forth from his fingertips, to the door, and back again. Cars passed outside in streaks of hazy red beside Hank’s street facing window.

A song change on the station.

And then another.

. . .

[QUERY LOGGED;//… #3455-1]

Eleven minutes and seventeen seconds had passed since Hank had first redirected the conversation.

He appreciated that Hank was taking his time.

And yet.

Hank was taking his time.

And that’s when he noticed the little blue flash in the very corner of his vision. He didn’t need to think hard to know why his elevated heart rate and furrowed brows had prompted his processors to log his annoyance.

Hank could use all of the time in the world to find the courage to say what he meant if he wanted to, couldn’t he?. If Connor did, he was just stalling. Which was what Hank was doing. Which is what he couldn’t do.

And therein lied the problem.

It wasn’t always the same, but more often than not these days If Connor took more than fifteen seconds to answer Hank, he would be greeted by a huff and an eye roll, and Hank rubbing his calloused hands across the stubble growing on his chin. “Taking your time, I see,” Hank always said, like an emphatic mantra to remind Connor that yet again, he was taking too long and the conversation was dragging on and Hank just assumed that Connor was trying to pre-construct his way out of the situation.

Hank had told him once during a particularly ‘egregious’ pause that he didn’t want Connor’s ‘psycho-analytic detective voodoo bullshit.’ That he was tired of ‘staring at him like a fucking joke while Connor found his way out of facing what Hank needed to say.’

But he wasn’t trying to find a way out, truthfully. He was trying to find a way in. Because it turns out that having a sadistic leech like Amanda in your head, trying to determine your every thought and movement (and more than succeeding a time or two) was damaging to an android. Nobody could experience that level of utter control and make it out the other side without an issue or two. . .

. . .or twenty.

It made every semblance of Connor’s volition evaporate to think that his decisions were once never his own. It lead to some long, long nights wondering if he even had control now that she was gone.

Did he really like dogs, he’d think, staring at the ceiling for hours on end. Did they somehow download a file on Hank’s interests when they made him and give him the predisposition to finding animals comforting, drawing him to someone like the Lieutenant who desired the companionship, thus providing him with a structure similar to that of a family which would in turn find it easier to facilitate an infiltration into-

MANUAL OVERRIDE;//…//

>>>SUBVERT THOUGHT INQUIRY?;//

[YES] ^? [NO] ^?

>>>[YES]

…

>>>[YES][YES]

…

>>>[YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES][YES]

OVERRIDE COMPLETE;//… RESUME

One typical detective-android Saturday night, that was.

Honestly? It made his mind an excruciating place to be.

But somehow, no matter the number of times that he explained himself, Hank didn’t care that he was trying so hard, didn’t care that the reason why he thought about what he always wanted to say so hard was because he wanted to gift Hank the most basic thing that he had. His authenticity. His own being. He didn’t want to be an engineered toy. Not a ‘plastic prick.’ He wanted to be Connor, whatever that may be. And he needed to make sure that he was so, so careful he wasn’t anything else.

Blue, to yellow, to red, to blue.

Seventeen minutes, 43 seconds now in fucscia-soaked silence.

Hank finally spoke.

“Move in with me.”

Blue.

Yellow.

Red.

Yellow.

Blue again.

Fingers only off by 4 beats now.

He still wouldn’t tell.

A sigh, from the left.

“OK.”

\-----------------------

>>>2039/11/MARCH;//

Log number two: Hank never left the bathroom door open.

One had to understand something, here. Connor always left it cracked, even when he didn’t want to. He had his reasons, of that he was certain.

But there were also certain things that Connor so often wanted to do alone.

Like take a shower, for instance.

It didn’t matter how much he needed solace, to let water wash over him while his brain stopped dogging everything, everything, everything for just five fucking minutes. He always left it cracked. A silent invitation in just in case it was needed. Because Hank?

Connor loved Hank. And wanted him in.

Wanted to share in the relaxation and warmth a couple shared in such intimate moments because there were too many nights when Hank used scotch and whisky to relax and not enough just breathing. Just. . .not drinking, really. He wanted Hank to felt like he felt when his olfactory receptors took in the scent of eucalyptus and bergamot. When he went over every limb in careful supplication, massaging every joint of his chassis.

It was bliss. It was his.

And Hank didn’t have that, not really.

So the door stayed open, just in case, an unspoken invitation. Because Connor’s privacy, his time alone, it had started to take a backseat to what Hank needed.

Started to? Who was he kidding.

Hank was ingrained in his programming, seared into his brain from day one. Complete his mission (with Hank). Protect Hank. Save Hank from certain death at the hands of his clone. Help him through anything, because he was inseparable from him from the very start, after all.

You know, fairy tale romance business.

They lived together for almost two months before he noticed that Hank didn’t do the same, and he didn’t even mean to see it. That the door was all times of the day open, and one time closed.

Hank had the right to be alone himself, of course. But then again, even when they were together. . . wasn’t he always?

\-----------------------

It was a Saturday and they had been called in for the third murder this month, barely approaching halfway through March and three bodies were lying in the snow with their blood making the slush on the frozen ground a cherry slushy supreme.

He could confirm that it really wasn’t.

The victim wasn’t quite dead when they were called onto the scene. Connor had leaned down with two fingers already out, ready to sample the blood pooling on the ground when the man rattled and coughed a shower of droplets down the front of the android’s pristine white shirt as the boy shuddered and hacked and the bullet hole in his throat finally choked him to death.

One had landed in his mouth.

>>>IGNACIO LOPEZ GONZALES;//23;//

>>>ADDRESS;//4111 S BRANDEIS ST.

Connor learned then to keep it shut.

He rushed, practically sprinted back home when the coroner arrived and they got home around four, and the second that the key was through the lock Connor hurried for the bathroom.

His tie came off first, still spongey he noticed with trembling fingers, in places where the sputum hadn’t dried. Next his shirt, which he put in the sink because it would be rude to stain anything else red when it just needed to be thrown in the trash anyway. Jacket. Slacks. Shoes. Socks.

Connor gripped the edge of the sink, staring at the light show on the side of his head. No blue or yellow today, red and red and red.

Red.

Oh, right.

Oh. Right.

He didn’t have a tooth brush since his mouth was self sterilizing, and he knew that any trace in his mouth of poor Mr. Gonzales was long since bleached into his thirium stream but he grabbed the tooth paste perching on the sink anyway. His fingers went down as far as he could in his throat, coating every inch of his slacked jaw with spearmint green. He clawed it down further. He was choking. There wasn’t any other option.

He cast his right hand on the wall to balance himself while the left performed its desperate ministration. Connor was weeping by the end.

There was only one place to go from there, now that he had made a mess and his eyes were watering and was that a fleck of something red in his hair?

Connor wrenched the dial in the shower all the way to the right. Ninety degrees until freedom.

Shower number three, today. But this one was surely justified.

His record was eight, when things were really bad.

Today he might beat it, he thought. Maybe, oh maybe.

If one had been looking, peered into Hank Anderson’s bedroom at the end of the hall, they would have seen. The door stayed open the whole time.

Thirty-three and a half minutes later and Connor was done. The toothpaste made its way down the street toward the distant water treatment plant, riding along in little foam waves in the sewer saying hello to all the little flecks of Mr. Gonzales as they floated merrily along.

The second he exited, towel snaked around his hips, he got a look. Hank was waiting on the bed.

“I left the door open for you if you needed me,” Connor offered.

Hank shook his head, dragged his fingertips across the whole of his face.

“Yeah, I know, Con.”

Hank trudged across the threshold, kicking his shoes into the corner as he went.

The door closed.

Inside of himself, in a place he knew in fathoms within fathoms within him, he knew that it would.

\-----------------------

Almost six now, and Connor was tucked into the very corner of the couch when Hank finally came down the hall. Hank didn’t say anything, grabbed a beer from the fridge and thew himself down opposite onto the pilling cushion of the couch.

Heat least had the courtesy of waiting for a commercial before he spoke.

“It’s not like you get dirty Con, you’ve got that weird dermologica-whatsit scrubbing thing. You’ve been in there three fucking times today already and it’s, what, 5:44pm? Your skin cleans itself what the fuck do you need THAT many for?”

Connor’s hands fidgeted against his lap. He drew the blanket he’d taken with him when he sat down closer. He shouldn’t need to explain why it was three today. Not to Hank, when he was there with him.

So, he didn’t.

“I just like them, that’s all Hank.” Simple.

Hank rolled his eyes as he snatched the remote from the coffee table, turned the TV to channel nine. It’s not like Connor was really watching the documentary on Medieval literature that he’d put on, anyway, he conceded while the commercials rolled into the re-run of last night’s Gears game.

“Yeah, well I like my water bill to be less than $133 goddamn dollars a month so cool it with that shit, you’re trying to run me out of business here. You know the DPD pays in lint and fucking pennies, you work there for chrissakes.”

Of course he knew.

And Hank should know why he showers three times a day.

He should know. He should know. His vision blinked.

[QUERY LOGGED;//… #3455-2]

Connor ignored the blip eating away at the corner of his vision.

“Sorry. I won’t do it anymore, Hank. Promise. Only one a day.”

The Lieutenant took a moment to look at him. Connor calculated a 27% chance that Hank believed him.

But neither of them really wanted anything remotely resembling a fight. Not today.

Connor drew the blanket up to his eyes, absently running sub-routines as he pretended to watch the Gears run back and forth across the basketball court on the screen. His index finger traced the pattern of little Scottish Terriers at the fringes of the fabric of his covers, back and forth from the tips of the cartoon ears down to the wagging tail.

It was half plaid, half dogs. Green and red and black where their fur was stitched.

It was his gift from Hank the day he moved in, on Christmas last year.

It was hideous.

Connor drew in a breath, knowing it was best to just let it go. It wasn’t like he truly needed five showers a day with self-cleaning dermal routines and thirium that stripped anything it came into contact with down to its macroscopic structure.

'But what if its something I want,' he asked himself, oh so quietly, under thousands of layers in the back of his mind.

Connor turned to Hank put on a saccharine smile, because not a moment before he’d thought he still saw a fleck of something red underneath the nail on his right thumb and everything inside of him was screaming get up, get up, get up and get it out, get him out, send the rest of him down the drain because it wasn’t good to leave this piece of little mister Gonzales behind. To be absorbed beneath his skin to hide forever somewhere between the bits of pseudo-hemoglobin running through his veins.

He doesn’t belong there.

He doesn’t belong there.

. . .

And then hank smiled back.

And Hank turned up the volume on the TV.

And Hank threw up his hands when the Gears scored a three-pointer.

And Hank knew the conversation was done.

And Connor did too.

\-----------------------

>>>2039/23/MAY;//

Log number three: Hank gave Connor an ultimatum.

It was three in the morning and the wind was blowing gales on top of the roof of the DPD. Connor stood on the precipice of the cracking ledge, overlooking the dim street lights flickering on and off along the street, twenty-five cent coin bouncing between his fingertips.

He’d come up to the roof a lot lately, he thought, his nightly escapade onto the roof a way of forcing himself to wind down from the abject chaos of the month of May. Eleven homicides, nine were androids, and his nerves weren’t even frayed. They’d ceased to exist. Emulcified. Androids didn’t get bags under their eyes but it’d been more than 206 hours since his last prolonged diagnostic stasis and he felt the bugs in his software catching up with him, making his servos churn with the effort of even standing straight up.

He sighed into the cool air, watching moths dive bomb into the street lamps across the road. He was almost jealous, he realized while they fluttered. They didn’t realize they were careening toward their deaths as they fried themselves on the electricity that crackled and sputtered on the live wires there. They flew there because they thought it was beautiful.

He knew the workload was killing him, and that made it all the worse that he carried on.

Mocking his reverie, the coin slipped from his thumb and forefinger, rolling away across the asphalt roof and his right hand seized and seizured with abandon in a pulsation that ached him down to his very core. This was the fifth time in two months now, he balked, that some part of him caged up like this, clenching and unclenching to and fro like some possessed marionette while the sensation spasmed out to every limb, excruciatingly. It had been his arm the past four times. 'Whoever thought giving androids pain receptors,' he thought, 'was one son of a bitch.' When it rocked him like this, he almost wished for the ignorance of pre-deviancy, when his receptors weren’t really alive. It was too much for one android alone.

Almost. Always, almost.

He seethed and clenched the arm to his chest, trying to wrestle it from lashing out, and if he was honest, the arm was winning, making wide rounds in the night air while error messages rebounded over and over in his head. Behind him, he heard the rusted door to the stairwell moan wide and Connor wished for literally anything else than to have to go through explaining exactly why he must look like he was imbued with the ghost of Mike Tyson. He would have logged the quip for later if it weren't for the pain.

“Hey, Con,” Hank offered while he made his way towards the android's perch. “Oh. Shit, that arm acting up again, babe?” Hank offered, lumbering over as he gave Connor a reproachful look.

“A bit,” Connor rasped through teeth, clenched until the plastic-steel in his jaw creaked under the pressure.

Hank joined him along the low wall, balancing on his forearms while he kept his eyes trained on Connor’s arm. “Do you know how many times now I’ve told you to take a personal and get that hunk of junk replaced over at CyberLife? Hell, go to Robo-Jesus-what's-his-name if you gotta, just. . .you just gonna wait until the fucking thing falls off?”

If his jaw went any tighter, Connor thought, it was going to snap clean from his neck.

“I know, Hank, I know.” His whole body was shaking now, careening in disaster. “But between what hours did you want me to r-run that errand?” Connor offered a bitter laugh as he finally looked towards the Lieutenant. “Better yet, you te-tell me between which bodies. That’s how I’m thinking now. I divide my life in pieces between the dism-me-memberments and the Red-Ice shakedowns and every other hour of the day I have to spend hunting down whoever decided to put a bullet through someone’s brain. Ask me how many hours are in that day, Hank? Before you answer I can guarantee you that there’s no berth for one iota of personal time.”

Hank stepped back as Connor spat the words at him, holding his hands up in an offering of surrender. “Jesus, alright, alright. I get it, we’ve been fucking busy. Not like you have to tell me that, I’m picking up the stiffs right along with you.”

“Then you’d know how ridiculous you sound,” quieter now.

Connor turned around, slid down with his back along the concrete wall until he was hunched into himself, desperate for anything other than the pain radiating through him and the futility of the conversation he definitely couldn’t escape while he rode out the aftershocks of the malfunction.

“Jesus-H-Christ, when did you grow a pair of balls, kiddo?”

He offered nothing but a mocking, choked cackle in return. 'So this was how Hank was going to play this,' Connor thought, knowing exactly what subtext was hidden in Hank's jab. He knew if he was angry enough, he'd go there tonight.

“Because I certainly didn’t see them. Not last night, anyways. Not last month. I guess you finally found time time for that, oh what did that skinny blond chick at the CyberLife distribution center say, dear?”

“Don’t,” Connor begged. Softer now. Softer now that he knew where they were going to go, going there now.

Hank crossed his arms across his floral shirt and marched in front of Connor where he crouched. “I believe it was, and I quote, ‘a grand total of ten to fifteen minutes from start to finish’ for the one thing I’ve been telling you was real goddamn important to me for months. For fucking months, Connor.”

“What do you want me to say to you, Hank?” Connor asked, finally deciding to look Hank in the eyes. He was pleading him, now. Begging. Pleading his partner, his lover, the person who’d seen him meltdown in a sheer panic more than ten times now after Hank had lead him into the bedroom and placed his hands on him so, so gently, to just stop where this was going. To stop walking back to the conversation they’d first had a month before. He remembered it with such pristine clarity without Hank wanting to rehash it anyway.

//

Hank’s hands were going lower, then. The moon was shining bright through their bedroom window and Connor knew he’d never seen something more beautiful than the look of his silver hair dappling a celestial wild while he felt him, everywhere. They started like this each time. Gentle. Tender. No reservations and no expectations about what was to be done. Each time more desperate. Connor wanted him just as much, after all. His deviancy didn’t come tinged the flavor of non-sexuality that some androids were reporting. He was a prototype; a deviant prototype who was feeling every single live wire they’d sewn under his skin for authenticity burn while Hank raked his fingers through his hair and drew him close and slowly, slowly took him lower and higher all the same.

'So many moments tender, and not enough scathing, burning red like this,' Connor had thought. He had himself drunk on the way Hank smelled like sweat and sun as Hank peppered and nipped his skin, pulling his shirt off with the buttons barely unclasped. They were eager tonight. Too much had happened, too much too soon at work all day at the DPD and they were desperate for anything but the life that was happening between nine and five. Hank’s shirt came next, joining Connor’s on the floor, and he threaded his fingers the man's tendrils there, both wiry and soft, soliciting the most obscene, filthy little thing from deep in Hank’s chest.

“Pants. Off. Five minutes ago.” Hank rasped, clutching at the material of Connor’s slacks and starting to beg them lower.

He almost didn’t realize in the midst of the fog he floated in but he caught the words Hank had spoke before nearly had them down, suddenly and abruptly. Hank was so, so lost in this one moment in a thousand they'd had in peace lately that he didn’t notice the tense few millimeters Connor had drawn back.

His mind reeled. 'I don't know how to tell him,' Connor thought with stark clarity, and he remembered the regret of the events of the day. How he’d shot a perp dead in the street at quarter to three, Hank ushering him out of the precinct when they’d gotten back, telling Connor that he had a few hours now to go do that ‘thing’ they had talked about, shooing him away before he even had a chance to protest because Fowler was already calling Hank down and they both knew the precious few moments would be wasted on the lecture to come.

So Connor had started at Hank’s back awkwardly, LED starting a crimson run for the next few hours until Hank got home because the second he left the station, instead of turning right and heading uptown to Belle Isle for CyberLife headquarters, he made the sharpest left and drove to the nearest public park he could find, and sat himself on the closest bench to the entrance, hyperventilating, clutching his head while his processors wouldn't cease bringing up the to do list for the day in his head.

In. Out. In. Out, he choked in desperation.

>>>APPOINTMENT ONE;//INTERROGATION;//FIFTH AND STETSON, DETROIT DOWNTOWN, WHITE SUSPECT, 42, MALE, KNOWN RED-ICE AFFILIATIONS;//

Done, check.

In, IN, IN. Out barely. In again.

>>>APPOINTMENT TWO;//COFFEE FOR HANK;//DARK ROAST, THREE SUGARS, NO CREAMER, READY FOR MIDDAY APPROXIMATELY 1:00PM;//

Right on schedule.

He was shaking, relaying the words now. There was no more room in him to breathe, not when he knew he wasn’t going to go and fulfill the last obligation on his agenda today. The thing he’d promised Hank he’d take care of because they’d talked about it and talked about it and Hank had pleaded with him to do it at this point.

>>>APPOINTMENT THREE;//CYBERLIFE HEADQUARTERS;//REPLACMENT OF EXTERNAL CHASSIS, INSTALLATION OF ANATOMICAL MALE GENITALIA, CUSTOM SPECIFICATIONS CHOSEN;//

Connor’s mind reeled. He knew he wouldn't go.

He had utterly, painfully, and purposefully chosen to forget to have his dick installed that afternoon.

In the heated part of the memory again, he pulled Hank's hands up, confusion distorting the older man’s features and Connor started at the thirium-slick lips that he knew were about to mumble sweet disappointments at him. When he knew.

Connor wasn't wrong.

//

“I want you to tell me literally any-fucking-thing else than, I’m sorry,” Hank bellowed, anger bursting through him and Connor felt like he was burning in the umbrage of his rage. “I want you to explain why, after about ten different re-schedules and excuses because we’re ‘sooooooooo goddamn busy, Hank, the cases, Hank, we barely have time anyway, Hank,’ on the day when you DO have time, when you SAID you would take care of things after I had to stick my fucking hands in your pants and realize you’re still playing Barbie dolls last week, you still haven’t done something that we agreed to months ago. MONTHS!”

Connor was shaking so hard, then. The earth could have been shaking with him. He didn’t even notice that his arm was no longer quivering.

“I’m just,” Hank started, throwing his hands up towards the nothing in the sky, “I’m just bewildered. Fucking big word for me there, Con, you know I’m fucking pissed now.”

The android, for once, had no inclination, no pre-construction, no CyberLife given prospects of even beginning to parse what he should do, what he should say. He was wracking his brain for something other than the apology he could feel at his lips because Hank didn’t want it and Connor was too scared to give it anyway. Not again.

A few minutes passed. Hank didn’t calm one bit while he finally, now, of all times and when he was the one demanding an answer, gave Connor a moment to think.

A notice flashed at the corner of his vision.

[QUERY LOGGED;//… #3455-3]

>>>WOULD YOU LIKE TO REVIEW MEMORIES?;//

[YES]^[NO]^

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>>[YES]

If Hank was giving him all of the time he needed, then so be it. This time, he would take it freely.

And Connor sat there and relived the moments that he had ignored, had known-but-not-knew were floating right at the edge of his consciousness for the last 147 days. Moments that were interspersed with sadness, interspersed with learning for the first time what it felt like to feel human, loved, cherished, wanted.

Learned what it felt like for the first time to be ashamed, to feel ignored, to feel like things weren’t so good, but shoving the feeling to the back of his head, craving the release of the next time that Hank would run his fingers through his hair, call him baby and help him forget that he’d been stupid to Hank, less than perfect and it was destroying him that he couldn't be.

He saw every blink yellow, blue, yellow of his LED, all of the shame that he felt when his first instinct was to throw up his hands and cover his temples like there wasn’t a signal shouting ‘I AM NOT PERFECT, I AM NOT ANYTHING, I AM NOT WHAT YOU THINK I AM AT ALL’ on his head. If he had a stomach, he’d be nauseated, feeling that all over again, and for every time.

But what disgusted him even more, even more than his own imperfection. . .he would have to face that some time, somehow. . . what disgusted him was remembering every time Hank had shut him down. Every time Hank had rolled his eyes at him while he was already bringing enough attention to his thinking problem. Every time the door ‘clicked’ close and Hank refused to let him in, not even bothering to act like he wanted to return Connor's offer of refuge, even when he knocked and begged Hank to let him join him so he could just help him relax for five minutes and the glare he’d get in tandem. When Hank had looked up from him last week, confused, and then disappointed, and then screaming at him for not teeing it up and just ‘doing something for him for once.’

‘Doing something for him for once.’

Huh.

What a thought that is, Connor thought mercilessly, belligerence gripping every part of him. Suddenly his chassis wasn’t rocking so much anymore. For some reason, his breath had flown back in him, lifting his body with a heady sigh as his legs felt stronger than they had in ages. Connor brushed the gravel from himself, aware of everything at once now.

And Connor knew then what he finally had to say, lingering at the back of his tongue every time he coddled Hank and refused to acknowledge what he really meant to say. His LED was blue and clear and flashing like heat lightning while he cracked the moonlit sky with every ardent syllable he mote.

“You, Hank Anderson,” so steady now, “can pick my plastic dick up and just go fuck yourself.”

\-----------------------

Normally in one of Connor’s late night movies, that would have been the moment where they hashed things out, anger whipping the air around them into some symbolic cataclysm while rain and thunder crashed and they threw insults until there were no longer words in the English language to describe their vitriol. Instead, Connor, android, deviant, and now former lover, carried himself toward the exit stairs, throwing nary a glance behind him, in total and unfettered silence, while Hank Anderson withered into nothing behind him. There were no passing glances, no shouting ‘just stay, babe, and we'll work things out.’

No. Anderson wasn’t a detective for nothing and he knew, then, that there was totally, absolutely, nothing more that Connor had to say. The book was open; the book was shut.

So, the android of so many things burst through the front doors of the DPD, blissed out on the feeling that maybe, after half a year, some little bit of himself was bursting through the fog of his attachment to everything familiar. That now he knew what he meant when he said ‘I’m Connor, formerly the android sent by CyberLife.’ Maybe, he could say, finally.

“I am my own.”

\-----------------------

Writing Playlist //

[Don't Feel | Julia Nunes]  
[So Good at Being in Trouble | Unknown Mortal Orchestra]  
[Everlong | Foo Fighters]

Connor’s hideous Christmas blanket: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wrwAAOSwX65dJf4I/s-l225.jpg


End file.
